


The First Night

by runsinthefamily



Series: Nineteen [11]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Awakening, Comfort Sex, damage, joining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:09:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runsinthefamily/pseuds/runsinthefamily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Anything?” It’s automatic, it’s a reflex so honed that the word is out before he is aware his lips are moving.</p>
<p>She smiles, tilts her head on one side.  “Would it help?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Night

He always thought he would like a room of his own. One without other apprentices or mages or creaking wooden ‘walls’ that offered nothing but the barest illusion of privacy. On the run it was all barns and hedges and sometimes space on the floor in some farmer’s house, snugged up against the dogs, smelling farts and smoke and poorly-cleaned crockery and while he always told himself that he loved how dirty the world was, how _real_ and _fundamental_ and _free_ , he knew himself to be as fastidious as a cat. A room of his own, that he could tidy and arrange and sweep and wank in, where no one could see him but the Maker, and He’d turned His face away. The Chantry said so.

But now, lying on his bed in the quiet, all he can feel is a vague, looming, ridiculous fear that he is the only living creature in the Keep. The darkspawn have come and stolen everyone else away and it is just him, here in his room, head and gut still throbbing from the Joining. Alone.

Perhaps it isn’t the Keep, perhaps it is all of Amaranthine. Of Ferelden. Of _Thedas_ , and he is the last living soul anywhere in the world, not even a cat to keep him company. 

He tosses onto his side, the whisper-slide of the sheets obscenely loud. He’d been so pleased with the damn room earlier but now the barren stone walls seemed to lean in on him and the torchlight from under the door flickered and wavered and began to fade and he wished that he could forget, that he could just have this, enjoy his privacy. Be normal.

_I’m not and I never will be._ The templars had always said so and in the end they’d made it true.

A footstep, in the hall. Armor clinks. The fear is so immediate and all-encompassing that he stuffs his fist into his mouth and bites down to suppress a scream.

“Anders?” It's Solona’s voice. Commander Amell, he supposes he isto call her now, although it's hard to forget that they’d been one another’s first sloppy kiss. “Anders, are you awake?”

He sits up. “Yes,” he says, in a husky croak. Clears his throat, tries again. “Yes!”

“Can I come in?”

_Maker, yes_ , he thinks as he pads to the door and lifts the latch, but what he says is, “Why Commander. Visiting your underlings at this time of night? What will people say?”

“What I tell them to,” she says, smiling crookedly up at him. She’s still in armor, one hand resting on the hilt of her delicate magesword. She is exotic in so many ways to him now, with her scarred face and her calloused hands and her strange foreign magics. 

He can scarcely summon the courage to flirt with her anymore. “Come in,” he offers.

She enters, lights the candles with a snap of her fingers, and settles into the lone chair, which groans under her. Irritation crosses her face. “Damned armor,” she says. “I don’t feel the weight but everything else still does. I broke a bench the other day. Oghren didn’t stop laughing for an hour.”

“I think it’s marvelous,” says Anders. “Lost elvhen magic. I bet Templars love it.”

She smirks. “Oh, they do. You can see all the little tin gears overheating in their heads.”

“Wish I could learn it.”

“Me too,” she says. “But I had it basically rammed into my brain by a thousand-year-old Elf ghost. Hard to turn that into a regulated lesson plan.”

He laughs, more out of sheer relief at her presence than anything else. A small silence falls after in which he becomes aware that she is watching him. 

“What?” he asks. “Ink on my nose? Hair standing up? My knees are shockingly knobbly, I know, but you’re the one who insisted upon visiting during sleepytime.”

“You were sleeping?” She smiles a bit.

“No,” he says. There is another silence and then, “When I heard you in the hall, your armor …”

“Shit,” she says, distress falling on her face like a shadow. “Oh, Void take it, I’m so sorry Anders, I never even thought.” 

“No, no, really,” he says, waving his hands. “It was reassuring, familiarity in a strange place, how I do miss the tromp of plated feet and so on. Gave me a real sense of home.”

She has the strangest look on her face now, something like pain and amusement and understanding, braided together, _welded_ together. “Anything to help a new recruit settle in,” she says. 

“Anything?” It’s automatic, it’s a reflex so honed that the word is out before he is aware his lips are moving.

She smiles, tilts her head on one side. “Would it help?”

“Maker, yes,” he says.

She stands, strips off her gauntlets, and lays them on the chair. “Help me out of this tin suit,” she says. It’s all buckles and layers and somewhat-stinky underpadding until she is in just breastband and smalls. He reaches for her and she lifts a finger. “Ah, ah,” she says, reaches back, and latches the door.

“Right,” he says, and huffs a laugh.

She kisses him, sweet and slow. 

The sex is nice, the sex is lovely, he wonders who she’s been sleeping with and if he could get an introduction, but the best is afterward, when she stays, warm and small and breathing in his arms, no need to get off and clean off and hurry off, no one coming to haul them apart and lecture them about fraternization and impropriety and discretion. The door is latched. There are no templars outside. 

“It took me months,” she confesses in the dark. “I was so terrified. I was too ignorant to even know how ignorant I was. Alistair taught me about money after I tried to pay for a wheel of cheese with a gold sovereign.” She strokes his chest in small circles. “It never really goes away. I think I’ll always feel odd.”

He holds her tighter, tucks her up under his chin. “I don’t want to believe that,” he says.

“Not everything can be healed.” Her voice is calm and clear but he feels a trickle of wet on his collarbone. “When a tree grows crooked, that’s the way it stays. But it can still flower.”

“Sounds like poetic bullshit to me,” he says.

“I did travel with a bard for almost a year,” she says. “That sort of thing rubs off on you.”

“Tell me more about this rubbing.”

“Go to sleep, Anders,” she says.

He does.


End file.
